Executive Director’s Letter, Spring 2022
2022 finds WalkBoston poised to begin two major new projects in the City of Boston and thrilled to continue our Age-Friendly walking work across Massachusetts. We have partnered with GreenRoots — an environmental justice organization working in Chelsea and East Boston — to work with residents to make walking routes to several of East Boston’s parks safer and more attractive. And, as part of a 5-year research project, WalkBoston is working with Boston Medical Center to study the impact of signed walking routes and printed maps on residents’ decisions around physical activity. Through walking advocacy workshops, we will support the residents as they identify and work to get sidewalks fixed and crosswalks painted around their developments. Our Age-Friendly walking work will continue with a new focus on working with disability professionals — those who train people with disabilities to use public transit and those who provide care to older adults. Look for updates in our e-news and blog posts highlighting our work on these projects throughout the year. To get all this new work done, we now have two amazing Program Managers, Miranda Briseño and Ayesha Mehrotra. Miranda is a Tufts Urban and Environmental Planning program (UEP) grad and comes to us from the Planning Department at the City of Medford. Ayesha is a Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) grad who started as an intern with us in 2019, and thankfully, is now on staff full time. After 21 months of being a fully virtual organization, we are now back in Boston sharing space with our transportation advocacy friends —just down the street from our old office space on School Street. It’s a place to come, meet, and reconnect with people we have not seen in person since all this began. We, like many with office jobs, are trying to figure out what a hybrid office environment looks like for WalkBoston. We’ll keep you posted and would love to hear how all of you are managing new commuting patterns and navigating new office policies. We look forward to hosting our 32nd Annual Celebration on March 30, 2022, which will be our third virtual celebration. While we wish we could all come together in person, we have gotten pretty good at putting on a virtual show! I hope to see you all there. Until then, stay safe and shovel your sidewalk!
This article was featured in WalkBoston’s Spring 2022 newsletter.
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